


Quantum Memory

by jenni3penny



Series: McAvoys 1.0 [10]
Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 00:25:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13306500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenni3penny/pseuds/jenni3penny
Summary: "She traps him when she says such things, seizes him up like light caught in glass, like a fractured color in a prism and sharded and sharp but breathless at once. It's the way scientists can stop light from moving, a laser and a crystal and her when she says things that make her so viscerally vulnerable... she's the very basis for Quantum Memory and he's just... momentarily trapped, inert. Light travels at three hundred million meters per second – that is, til she opens her mouth and says things like just his full name, with that sweet accent and obvious adoration. And an admission that sounds the closest to 'I love you' than anything else he's heard from her yet." Post-Brian. Pre-series.





	Quantum Memory

“What the fuck is this guy's problem?”

 _Besides the fact that he doesn't have a mostly naked MacKenzie McHale in his bed anymore_ , he muses after asking. His hand drops to his chest with the folded up section of the paper she'd handed him moments earlier and not even halfway through Brenner's op-ed he'd realized why she'd so gently kissed the top of his head as she'd reluctantly given it over.

She flicks her own section of the paper out and lays it flat against her pelvis, cutting off his view of the most fucking adorable little lavender lace panties he's ever seen. “ _Billy_ , really? You know exactly what his problem is.”

Will lifts the crumpled version of Brenner's article again, waves it between them before he rolls and overtakes her, drawing a laugh up her throat as she watches him and stretches her legs apart in silent acceptance of his shifting. “Is he for real with this?”

She merely sighs at him as she shrugs and seemingly mourns the fact that he's got most of the unread New York Times crumpled up between them and now immobile. Mac's fingers lift to stroke his hair back off his face as he settles between her legs and he watches the way the movement of her hand, her arm, shifts her muscles, her breasts. God, he loves her breasts and especially bare because he keeps hiding her bra underneath the comforter. He loves the little upturn of her nipples and -

“Are you really asking me that?” she asks gently, voice a patient hum of a sound. It's a sound that has become a fixture in the room now, a comfort of home that is now... irremovable, as far as he's concerned. The sound of her voice, its low and humming, heat has become just as integral to his bedroom as the bed itself.

“Yeah, really.” Her hands both slip down against his shoulders and he enjoys the way she starts using persistent thumbs and long fingers to rub into tense muscles. He simply groans his head down against her abdomen, enjoying how deeply she presses her fingertips between knotted up muscles. “He's just ripped me a new asshole for no reason. Puerile? Really? I mean... _puerile_?!”

“I knew that's the bit that would actually bother you,” she murmurs, her right hand stroking against his neck so that she can loosen the tension there. The other hand rises to smooth his hair slowly, rhythmically, and he could fall asleep exactly where he is if it weren't for the fact she keeps talking. And with an I-told-you-so tone that always has him bristling for a fight or a tease or a taunt. “I don't understand why you're surprised. He hates you because of me. _You_ should have seen this coming and, frankly, _I'm_ surprised it took this long.”

“I wonder if he remembers who broke up with whom, huh? Maybe he needs a face-to-face reminder.” Mac just rolls her eyes when he looks up to see how fairly the comment has landed between them and he half smirks, feels how lazy the movement is.

“You know, considering how much each of you profess to absolutely abhor each other, despite not spending any actual time together? You really are very similar emotionally.”

“Incorrect. I object,” he argues sharply, palms flush and brash against the mattress so that he can draw himself up the front of her, dragging the paper to crumpling as he stretches over her. “Utterly false and also fucking untrue.”

He can feel the voice of 'lawyer' on his tongue but it falls flat when MacKenzie's half naked under him and there's a crumpled up version of the New York Times between them.

“On what grounds?” she demands, head tipping and angle as she stretches her legs back out and arches her back, her hips rising to meet his and wrinkle more newsprint.

“Because, MacKenzie, I don't witch-hunt the other men who've gotten their, well - ”

“Don't you dare let it cross your lips.” Her hand bridges up between them and jams into the center of his chest, blocking him from lowering farther over her. 

“Frankly, I don't publicly go after the men who've otherwise _crossed your lips_ ,” he teases before dropping his head toward hers and letting his weight go limp and loose against her.

“No?” she questions, sluicing one hand up his chest to stroke into his hair.

He kisses her chastely in response, once and then again and he's not sure how many times he's kissed her in this bed but it's definitely not enough. Not when she laughs brighter each time he does it so he does it once more. “I simply pretend they don't fucking exist.”

The newest laugh she makes is quick and light, full of air and unbridled humor. Her voice goes lilted and warm, sensual. “No other man before you, hmmm?”

“Not one of note, no,” he replies smugly, his grin going lively and wild as she seemingly can't help herself but smirk in reply. She thinks he's sexy when he gets a little cocky, sorta smug, and he can tell. She always, _always_ , has. She can't hide that fact and it spurs him on usually, has him playing right into self deprecation or silliness.

She blinks leisurely, lazily, and it's sexy as hell. Those myriad eyes could fucking kill him once a day at the least and he willingly falls on that sword. “No other man before you has made me so secure, that's true.”

Sword through the heart, blood stops pumping, lungs collapse.

“Don't fuck with me, Mac. I'm mid-tirade. I'm pontificating on the fact that it was _him_ who broke up with _you_ , so - ”

“No other man's loved me half so well as you do, William Duncan McAvoy,” she tells him quietly, like she wants only the two of them to hear it. It's so tragically genuine, too. It's unheard of to him that he should be the first to treat as well as she should be treated but it's... he's proud. Fuck, yeah, he's proud. And pleased.

And she traps him when she says such things, seizes him up like light caught in glass, like a fractured color in a prism and sharded and sharp but breathless at once. It's the way scientists can stop light from moving, a laser and a crystal and her when she says things that make her so viscerally vulnerable. Fucking hell... she's the very basis for Quantum Memory and he's just... momentarily trapped, inert. Light travels at three hundred million meters per second – that is, til she opens her mouth and says things like just his full name, with that sweet accent and obvious adoration. And an admission that sounds the closest to ' _I love you_ ' than anything else he's heard from her yet.

She captures him dead still when she speaks to him like she really might be in love with him. “Seriously, Mac, you're...”

Or someday really deeply could be _the_ woman he spends the rest of his life-til-death with.

“ _Fuck_.” He willingly (purposely) slicks his tongue up the inside curve of one breast before turning his jaw and sucking briefly against her nipple, pressing it between his tongue and the roof of his mouth while she silts through his hair. He hums against it, groans and sucks and draws a whimper from her throat.

“Stop it,” he whispers moist and hot breath against tightening skin. “Stop flirting with me. It's distracting.”

“Now,” Mac tugs into his hair, digs against the blonde and lifts at his head as she speaks just loud enough for him to hear her, “you know full well that Brian is simply messing with you to get to me and I plan to keep pretending he just does _not_ exist so...”

She trails off into the warm quietness of the bedroom they share, the one she's half redecorated with her own things, and he lifts his glance to entirely meet hers. There's something unreadable in her expression at first, something perplexed and he just barely catches it before it's just gone, and suddenly. A moment later and she smiles, catches him immobile again as she grins and palms the back of his head. Fuck, it's beautiful too. The way she looks at him in bed, half naked and all flushed. There's a mingle of pink and pleasure on her that he savors every time he sees it.

Will blinks into her hush, leans his head closer into the stretch of her long fingers. “Mac?”

She sighs softly and then takes up answering, “Would you like to continue the Tirade Everlasting or make love to me _very_ slowly?”

Sometimes she speaks and he still doesn't understand how in the fuck this is his Real Life, actual reality...

“That's, like, an actual question?” He arches a brow, voice gone indignant as he reaches down to draw one of her legs up onto his hip, curling her half around him. “That's how you want it? Slow?”

“I think a lazy Sunday morning calls for equally lazy love-making, sir. Don't you?”

He slips his free hand between them in answer to her commentary, finds the front of lace panties and the moan that makes its way up from her lungs makes him grin like an idiot. She makes him grin like an idiot more often than not and he wouldn't trade that in for the wide world.

There's a great crumpling of newspaper between them and it draws her laughter, has her giggling breathlessly as he moves from trying to be as sexy as he can while dressed in his boxers and half the Arts and Leisure section. “I think he hates that he's lost you and he's starting to realize it's permanent.”

“I know that he does. Now, shush,” she playfully admonishes through her laughter and kisses, the sound of it dying lower as the both of them start tossing ripped and rumpled pieces of the Times from in between them. “Throw this trash away, darling.”

“Kills me when you call me that,” he tells her with a whisper and, fuck, he knows just from the already triumphant look on her face that he's gonna end up on his back, her on top.

She's got that haughty tone in her voice now, that slow and sensual blink before confidence kicks in and she takes control. He's fine with that, actually. She's a fucking dream to him any time, let alone in his lap and drawing his jaw up so she can kiss him slowly as he comes.

“Which is why I do it so sparingly,” she murmurs slowly against his lips, lovingly and light. “I don't want you spoiled.”

 

* * *

 

 

“ _I_ do _love you, Billy._ ”

She _knew_ she shouldn't have said it when she had.

Because he's basically just a small emotional child (with a serious attention deficit) in a grown man's body. But it had slipped out so softly and easily and it was the first time she'd thought it and her lungs hadn't burned themselves crisp with fear and anxiety at the same time so why not whisper it into the darkness of the bedroom they're now sharing?

But now he can't seem to stop fidgeting and, frankly put, it's driving her batty. “Would you just fucking stay still?”

His head lifts from her collarbone and his breath is hotly annoyed and frustrated. “Did you seriously just tell me that you love me? While I was _sleeping_?”

Umm... well... _Yes, possibly_???

But she couldn't possibly just say it.

And to his face, while he's looking at her and wide awake?

So... of course, she panics. “When?”

She panics and the first thought she has is to just act as though absolutely nothing has occurred and he's a fucking lunatic for thinking otherwise. She can feel her eyes widen a little in supposed confusion and she just runs with it because, well, the only other option is complete uncontrollable panic. And uncontrollable panic usually has MacKenzie Morgan McHale high-tailing it to the nearest door and farthest land possible in short-fucking-order. That just doesn't seem like a viable option, though, not with a goddamn linebacker of a man pinning her down.

“ _When_?” he bitterly mocks at her with the repetition. “Just now.”

“Just _now_ now? Certainly not.”

His face contorts to the closest thing she's seen of contempt, at least coming from him lately. She can tell too that he's balancing his patience because his breathing is purposeful and slow, measured as he blows it past his lips. “MacKenzie, I swear to Christ - ”

“ _Yes_ , all right?” she hashes hard between them as she unconsciously draws up and inward. He leans away from the way she pulls her arms up against herself and her palms are both curled against her throat and it's merely a moment before he pushes himself up to sitting. He obvioualy notes how vulnerable she suddenly seems and his face goes reflexively apologetic when she chews her bottom lip up between her teeth and then huffs. “Now you've ruined the moment.”

“Well, hon,” he says and shifts, one hand lifting to slowly brush her hair from her face. She leans her head a fraction closer to the span of his palm as he does it and it encourages him, has him rubbing her earlobe between finger and thumb. He's a tactile man and, for the most part, especially when they're alone, she adores that about him. “I sorta wish I'd been entirely conscious for the moment.”

“I couldn't have said it if you had been,” Mac admits warily, head tipped into his touch and eyes down dark so that she can avoid embarrassment, so that she can avoid the crystalline beautiful blue of his eyes. He moves to lift her jaw and she avoids it entirely, leaning forward so that she can cuddle against his chest instead. Will blinks and just accepts the movement, doesn't fight it but curls an arm against bare and flushed skin instead. She's cold and emotionally off balance and the best medicine for both is the fact that he's blissfully bigger than she is, stronger and he can close her up in his arms and hold on.

He loops her even closer, letting his face rub into her loose hair so that he can kiss behind her ear. “Not gonna say it again, are you?”

She can't. It's not... God, it's not like she doesn't want to.

It's just that her throat has already clamped closed against it as he hums a questioning noise against her scalp.

“Now you've gone and made me feel self conscious about it,” she mumbles onto his collarbone and then laughs in embarrassment. And the feeling of her bemused chagrin, the heat of her laughter against his skin, it has him laughing too. Freely and even as her hand rises and presses into his chest. Will just shifts closer, letting her lean farther into his lap as she sighs. “Do we have to talk about it this way?”

“It's called 'communication', sweetheart. Usually you're a pretty big fan. It's sorta your field.”

There's a loose shrug in her thin shoulders before she leans farther forward and Will just stretches himself farther upright to give her space. The inviting rumble of his voice has her crawling up from the tangled sheet and leftover bits of the newspaper so that she can straddle over him and curve herself into his lap. Long legs and arms wrap him up as she kisses him, all her breath a sigh that she leaves laying on his tongue. He ends up with a handful of lace knickers, his palm curving her ass as she leans harder against his chest and again buries her face in his neck. The other hand soothes slowly up and down her back and she has a moment to just truly enjoy loving the man. She allows herself to love him because he knows now and she can relax into his arms, she can relax into the scent of him and the heat of his closeness. Her arms loop on his shoulders and she feels the groan of pleasure that just hums out of him as he squeezes her tighter and closer.

“It _is_ my field,” she admits. “It just doesn't _usually_ involve me risking having my heart trampled twice in one year's time.”

Right, and that's why she's clutched up in his lap and hoping he doesn't take this love away, or hold it over her head.

That's why, she assumes, he just turns his head to kiss in her hair. Just as she should have expected from William Duncan McAvoy.

“You don't have to repeat it right now. Just don't retract it, okay?”

“I couldn't possibly, Billy....” she whispers onto his temple, lips pressed moving against his skin. “I only retract the things that aren't true.”


End file.
